If you go through your home, and look at the many products that furnish it, you will undoubtedly find the following three words on a fair few of them – made in China.

It seems that country can make anything, including, so it appears, a Tom & Jerry film.

Although originated by Hannah-Barbera in 1940, the China Film Co. managed to secure a co-production with their current owners Warner Bros. Pictures, and made their very own Tom & Jerry feature, that finds the battling duo in China.

Working as a trainee security guard in a museum in New York is Tom. One of his duties is to keep Jerry the mouse out, but he’s not very successful at doing that.

Jerry is keen to see a particular exhibit, an astral compass, but when a fight between him and Tom breaks out, they accidentally trigger its inner power, that send them flying back in to time to Gold City.

There they find themselves in the middle of a conflict, that occurs when its known the compass is back, when Rat wants to utilises its powers for his own means, and the Phoenix Master sees it has his ticket back to heaven.

With these two parties keen to get their mitts on the compass currently in Tom’s paws, the pair of them soon realise that they’re not in New York anymore.

Although this is lauded as the first ever full-length computer generated animated Tom & Jerry film, it is in name only.

They are merely uninvited guest stars in their own film; two furry sore thumbs standing out in an OTT mythical Chinese adventure, that features gargoyles, deities, Chinese lanterns and fireworks. It’s a curious cross-over that doesn’t really work; it would be like Jesus having his last supper with Bugs Bunny on his left, Daffy duck on his right, and the rest of the table filled with other Looney Tunes characters.

It makes you wonder why the Chinese Film Co. went to all the trouble to make the deal with WB, because there’s enough going on with the story, that would still work perfectly well without their minimal contribution. And although it opened well enough on release in China, it didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, so their contribution didn’t add much to the project.

And it’s unlikely to be embraced by fans of the duo everywhere else around the world; the fact that their appearance in it is nothing more than awkwardly wedged into the story, won’t win any of them around.

As an animated project it’s a curious affair, with some impressive animation techniques, a creative world with some vibrant mythical creatures – and Tom & Jerry, bizarrely.

It may well be their first CG feature, but there’s a distinct possibility - if this is anything to go by - that it will be their last, and they will live on once again, as fond memories in their classic shorts on the big and small screen.